mwh, thank you for your kind words of encouragement! If I made any progress, that’s all because you most patiently helped me through my mess. Really, I can’t thank you enough.
Let me explain why I did what I did trying to fix my first verses with the thrush. I tried to follow William’s guidelines but maybe I tried too hard or misunderstood him.
- Frist foot of each line should start with a dactyl.
-William says on hexameter as well as pentameter:
“The line should begin with a dactyl, an initial spondee being employed perhaps every six lines of hexameter.”
And I figured I’d always better start with a dactyl, since so far I’ve only have two lines. I most certainly glad if it’s not so!
- The pentameter must end with a disyllable.
“This is true once the super-refined Ovid enters the scene, but certainly not with Catullus. Still, it’s something to aim for.”
Wow, I’m so glad to hear this, too!
[lacrimor] You’re right! “o” of “lacrimo_” is “long by nature!” Doh! I was so carried away counting consonants I missed the very basics. Fixed!!
[my lovely thrush]
I replaced him with a noisy magpie trying to avoid the molossus ("_ _ " tur-dus-que or tur-di-que) “AROUND” the caesura, but I found he said the molossus should be avoided “AFTER” the caesura. So it was OK in the first place. No wonder you asked me why I did it only to import the noisy magpie as well as the error.
Now reunited with my thrush, I should do something about "sua_ve, " as adverbs are not supposed to be very elegiac. How about “meloda, orum, n” which itself means “sweet songs?” Seems nice.
This is what I’ve got now:
Sol micat invitans turdique meloda recantant
at lacrimo lecto vulnea cruris alens.
So_l mi-cat / in-vi_/tans || tur-/di_que me-/lo_da re/can-tant
_ vv / _ _ / _ || _ / _ vv / _vv / _ _
at lac-ri-/mo_ lec-/to_ || vul-ne-a / cru_ris a-/lens.
_ vv / _ _ / _ || _ vv / _ vv/_
[new vocabulary]
me-lo_da orum, n, pl : TGINeutral
[lessons learned]
I won’t try too hard meet every single rule William listed except for the absolute MUST such as no spondee in the fifth foot of hexameter, as I don’t seem to have been Ovid in my former life. But will always remember them as the goal and try to achieve them.